invincible air of being out of his element. He sat with his stout
boots tucked up under his chair, and clung to a teacup and saucer
and looked away from us into the fire, and we all sat about on
tables and chair-arms and windowsills and boxes and anywhere except
upon chairs after the manner of young men. The only other chair
whose seat was occupied was the one containing his knitted woollen
comforter and his picturesque old beach-photographer's hat. We were
all shy and didn't know how to take hold of him now we had got him,
and, which was disconcertingly unanticipated, he was manifestly
having the same difficulty with us. We had expected to be gripped.

"I'll not be knowing what to say to these Chaps," he repeated with a
north-country quality in his speech.

We made reassuring noises.

The Ambassador of the Workers stirred his tea earnestly through an
uncomfortable pause.

"I'd best tell 'em something of how things are in Lancashire, what
with the new machines and all that," he speculated at last with red
reflections in his thoughtful eyes.

We had an inexcusable dread that perhaps he would make a mess of the
meeting.

But when he was no longer in the unaccustomed meshes of refined
conversation, but speaking with an audience before him, he became a
different man. He declared he would explain to us just exactly what
socialism was, and went on at once to an impassioned contrast of